See old Apple graphics transformed into Cronenbergian nightmares

Yesterday Apple unveiled a suite of typically gorgeous new computers bearing all the hallmarks of a normal Apple product: brushed metal exterior, explosively colorful displays, and the requirement to buy a passel of new connectors and dongles. There’s also some sort of touch-bar thing, which one must presume will make sense in the distant future.

Still, Apple’s always made great-looking stuff. Even their earliest systems featured sharp lines and clean iconography. The Parisian artist Mattis Dovier appreciates these graphical interfaces, too, and he wields them as scalpels in his hauntingly incisive short films, each of which casually subverts our relationship with technology. (Warning: All of them feature flashing lights.)

Dovier’s video for XXX’s “Flight Attendant” hits the nail on the head most directly, beginning with images of an early Mac desktop that fade into an airplane trip trapped in some timeless space between ’80s fashion and modern tech. By the end, its ideal images of upward mobility have transformed into murder, dismemberment, and a snake crawling out of a woman’s face.

The short film “Inside” features the same pointillist, monochromatic aesthetic, but it traverses a decidedly more Cronenbergian narrative arc. Spoiler: The machines win, because the machines always win.

In some ways, it’s like a nightmare inverse of yesterday’s Apple event, using the imagery of the past to propose an ever less-human future. You can see the rest of Dovier’s artwork over on his Tumblr. Watch them on an Apple II to hasten the singularity.